Emotions

"You are greater than your emotions, and you need not repress them to realize this. To become objective with your own internal states, you must operate from a position where you can observe them and where you are not dominated by them. This will allow you to become present to yourself and will give you true compassion and understanding. Then you will not be a tyrant with yourself, and tyranny in your life will come to an end."

Directives

"Realize the littleness of your emotional states and the greatness of Knowledge. In this way, Knowledge will balance your emotional states and will reveal to you the source of your own emotions, which is the source of your expression in the world."

"Do not let raging emotions or deep depression cast a shadow upon your practice, for your practice is greater than your emotional states, which change like the winds and the clouds but cannot mask the universe above them."

"The New Message teaching on relationships and higher purpose will require that you complete and that you forgive your former life so that you are free and powerful enough to take a greater journey. There is no escaping this work. There is no bypassing this work. There is no running away from your past. There is no hiding or denying or rejecting something that is real within yourself. Everything must come out into the open to be reconsidered and re-evaluated. You must be free to express grief, disappointment, anger. You must have this emotional freedom, or you are like a person who is held in chains, chained to a wall. You may have every advantage on the outside, but you are still like a person who is incarcerated within yourself, stifled by your own discord and by your own suppressed feelings and emotions. Your feelings and emotions in the future are meant to be vehicles of expressing something greater in life, but if you are choked and if your feelings are suppressed, how could you ever express anything greater in life? Your whole mechanism of expression, your whole medium of expression—your ideas, your emotions, your feelings, your perceptions—are all constrained. There must be freedom at this level. You cannot be choked and be able to experience and express something greater in life. You cannot be held in the past like a prisoner if you are to be free to move forward and to assume your true purpose and destiny in this life."

"You have to become tremendously sober, self-reliant and clear minded. You have to gain control over your emotions and your reactions sufficiently so that you can maintain an awareness of where you are and who you are, no matter what is going on around you. And you will have to overcome the temptations of fear to go into denial, avoidance or blaming others."

“It is difficult to be objective when you experience intense love for someone. But it is possible. It is possible because Knowledge is with you. Knowledge is not swayed by your intense loves and your intense hatreds. It is not swayed by your emotional states. Your emotional states only can make it more difficult for you to experience the presence and the direction of your Knowledge. That is not to say emotions are bad, of course not. But anything that dominates your mind that is not Knowledge can lead you astray and have a destructive impact upon you.”

Directing emotion

"Do you want to know why you are really sad and depressed and why those emotions come to you? It is because you miss God. That is the reason for all unhappiness and it is also the seed of all joy."

"If you cannot be present to life, to others or to yourself, the only possible place you could be is to be lost somewhere in your own thoughts, hidden behind your own self-defenses, covered up by your suppressed feelings and emotions, buried in your reactions to the past. Essentially, if you cannot be present to yourself, to others or to life, it means you are caught up in your thoughts and in your own condition. Here it is really necessary to break free. It is really necessary to begin to explore your own feelings. If you cannot feel anger, then you will not feel love. If you cannot feel sadness, how can you experience affinity with anyone? If you are choked because of the suppression of these things, then your mind will be unclear, your senses will be dulled and your expression will be oppressed."

There is "a deeper well of intelligence that" ... "does not vacillate from day to day, like your intellect or emotions. It is not prone to persuasion and denial, like your intellect and emotions."

"Be patient. Do not let your emotions drive you here and drive you there, for the workings of the heart are beyond the emotions that you feel day to day and moment to moment. They represent the great undercurrent. Like the great undercurrents that move the waters of the oceans of this world, they move the direction of your life. Yet like the great undercurrents of the oceans, they are not seen or recognized from the surface. If you live at the surface of your mind, you will be swayed by this thought and that thought and the thoughts of others. You will be governed by the mental environment in which you live."

"[There is seeing, there is knowing, and] then there is taking action—beginning to move, picking yourself up, setting yourself on the road again, regaining your strength, expressing your self-determination and exercising your power and authority. Here you are governing the mind instead of being governed by it. Here you are directing your emotions instead of being directed by them. Here you are overcoming your inertia, overcoming your resistance, while you are gaining self-determination."

Expressing emotion

"People may feel that they are expressing their emotions and that that is honest, but people can use their emotions to hurt others. They can use their emotions to condemn, criticize and ridicule others, and that is not really honest."

"When you are disappointed, let the emotions come forth. Be a witness to them. You are greater than any emotional state."

"I have emphasized that there are minds that are more powerful than yours. For this reason, you must learn to shield yourself when that is appropriate and open yourself when that is appropriate. This is a voluntary act. If you are completely open, well, you will find life to be very harsh. As you have skin and bone to protect your internal organs, you must have a shelter for yourself mentally. It need not be a prison house. It must be a dwelling you can enter and leave at will. Then you can use your emotions at will. They will not use you."

Emotions and sex

"If you have sex with someone, your body and emotions will attempt complete union. Your body and emotions do not discriminate. It is like digesting food."

"People are aroused sexually when they feel Presence. This Presence ignites a yearning for union which raises deep emotions and tremendous sensations physically .This vitality in your body is not to be denied .That is unhealthy. Yet it must be recognized and given constructive expression within your current circumstances."

Emotional freedom

Taking the Steps to Knowledge "will enable you to experience your deeper feelings and emotions and to forgive those individuals and those circumstances that you feel have wounded you in the past."

"Healing at the level of your thinking and emotions is" ... "not just an escape from pain; it is not just wanting to make something go away. It requires facing something and determining its real value and meaning for your life."

"Everything that has happened to you is material to develop wisdom. It is raw material for you to develop a greater wisdom and discernment and a greater compassion for people—to free your mind, to free your life, to free your emotions, to free your feelings, to make you feel alive again and wholly present in the moment, to open your eyes to the possibilities of your discerning your greater purpose and following a different kind of pathway in life that is not governed by the past."

Facing the Great Waves of Change

“You have to spend less time shoring yourself up or fighting fires within your circumstances. You can weather storms and difficulties. You have the emotional strength to face and endure loss or misfortune. You have a solid anchor being in the world and cannot easily be swept away by the Great Waves of change.”

"If you do not take action soon and begin to reconsider your life, to alter your circumstances and to set in train change that must occur both within your own thinking and emotions and your outer circumstances, you will be at a great disadvantage."

"God has been warning you all along through your experience, through your dreams, through your sensations and through your deeper emotions."

Processes

Most people "view the past in terms of regrettable events, painful encounters, disappointing relationships, withheld love and affection, resentment and resistance. Their feelings have been hurt. They feel they were treated unjustly and unlovingly, and so they view the past from a feeling of being hurt and victimized. They are angry; they are resentful; and they have no feeling, no compassion or love for those people who even raised them and who were influential in their life.

They are trying to go forward now, but they are wounded, and they are restrained. Their feelings are choked. They are not really fit to be in new relationships. They do not have the mental health or the discernment or the skills to be in a new relationship though they have invested themselves here already.

That is why you must go back, and you must revisit your relationships. You must understand the conditions in which people existed. Perhaps they were young and immature. Or perhaps, as is often the case with parents, they were under great pressure or were traumatized themselves—unable to give you the guidance and the affection you needed. What were the circumstances of their lives?

If you want to know a person and see a person clearly, you must have an understanding of them as an individual and also of their circumstances. Circumstances distort people. Stress distorts people. Unrelenting stress changes people. What were the conditions under which these people lived? Perhaps you would have responded no differently yourself had you lived under similar conditions as these. This enables you to bring back your awareness of someone else’s humanity and limitations.

It is important to express everything you could not express at the time, even if you cannot do that to the person directly. Write out a letter. Put down your feelings. Get them out of your system. Perhaps a professional can help you to get in touch with these feelings and to express them in a constructive way, but you must get them out of your mind. They must become communications. Perhaps you will never send these letters, but they are therapeutic for you.

You must bring your feeling back into these relationships to unlock your own emotions, to free your own mind and to be able to receive the guidance of Knowledge, which will come through your feelings, through your ideas and through your sensations. If these are all locked up in response to the past, you will not be able to know or feel anything. You must have this inner freedom. It is essential for your well-being and for the success of your future and present relationships."

"Everyone’s life situation is unique to a certain degree, but fundamentally everyone in the world was sent for a greater purpose, and anyone who is beginning to discover that for themselves must re-evaluate their past to free up their emotions, to release their condemnation and to restore humanity to all the people who influenced them. This is necessary, or you will be too disabled emotionally and psychologically to undertake a greater purpose in life. Your feelings will be bound to the past. Your judgments will shut you down. Your mind will be dark, full of condemnation and distrust."

Further Study

• Steps to Knowledge, Steps 89, 241